But whatever view may be held regarding the relationship between sexuality and art, it is a quite incontestable fact that our latter-day life is characterized by a need “for erotic illusion” (to use the expression of Konrad Lange), that the slighter degree of eroticism, as it exhibits itself in social intercourse between the two sexes, is principally of an artistic nature. I do not speak here merely of the dance as the artistic transfiguration of the erotic phenomena of courtship, or of dress and fashion and the whole _milieu_ as æsthetic means of expression of the personality (as they were described in earlier pages of this work), but I refer above all to =social intercourse= as a whole, which to-day represents a free and facile æsthetic element, in which modern love receives its most manifold suggestions. Emerson, in his essay on Love, has very beautifully described the importance to our civilized life of these slight, imponderable influences of an erotic-æsthetic nature; and Konrad Lange, in his “Wesen der Kunst” (vol. ii., p. 23; Berlin, 1901), refers the pleasure of social intercourse ultimately to the sexual impulse, even though therein sensuality is mitigated by illusion and is elevated to a purer sphere. Erotic enjoyment is modified into a “love-play,” sensuality is refined, spiritualized, dematerialized. It is precisely this æsthetic eroticism which at the present day becomes of increasing importance in the emotional life of civilized humanity, in the life of those engaged in the hard struggle for existence, to whom time and leisure are lacking for the “great” love-passion. For such as these, these gentler suggestions constitute the true charm of life, into the dreary monotony of which they bring light and colour. In his excellent “Remarks on Goethe’s Stella,” Wilhelm Scherer has assigned its true value to this erotic æstheticism and æsthetic eroticism of society and social intercourse. He speaks of a charm of personal presence, which brings out all that is best in two human beings. He speaks of an enthusiastic and complete surrender of the spirit and the emotions, in which the souls seem to enter into inseparable union--and yet only seem. For in reality this surrender occurs for weeks, for days, for minutes, for moments, and to various persons. These frequent, individual, purely spiritual contacts between the two sexes have completely the character of æsthetic joy; they give rise to a perception of =freedom=, of liberation from the power of the senses. Who does not know the happy freedom of spirit which is aroused by the glance of a beautiful girl, by the smile of a sympathetic face?